Huếday, Huếday. Come in ground control.

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I have Vietnam Fatigue. Our guide book mentions beggar fatigue, where one gets fed up of being begged at and having tatty products shoved under one's nose, and this is contributing to my Vietnam Fatigue. But it goes deeper than that.

I'm totally fed up with the Vietnamese. Period. Save for a couple of nice, helpful Vietnamese employees, I've been really irritated by their laziness, and the constant hawking, and their scamming.

I hate that everyone puts their prices up to an unreasonable level just because they see we aren't native, like the HCMC cyclo driver who tried to charge us almost $8 each for a 1-minute cycle ride. The logic is, as explained by the guidebook and also some of the lowlifes trying to sell us utter garbage, that since we are foreign, we can afford it. So we have to pay over the odds? We're spending lots to come on holiday only to pay more than we should just because they are poorer than us? We even have paid higher admission prices at bona-fide attractions, like museums, on the basis that we are foreign. And it isn't fair. I hate it.

And I hate how pushy they are. They may have limited English, but "no" means "no", and they must understand that, but they try it on. I don't like being pressured into buying things at the best of times, even at home with slightly over-eager salespeople, and I especially don't like it when they are pedalling something I don't want and will never want. And then they expect me to pay a fortune for it... no thanks.

And I hate that they are so lazy, and many of them are rude. Like today, in the hotel, one woman told me that the banks were shut, and it was only when I asked the manager that I found out that actually they weren't shut yet. The first woman clearly lied to me to avoid giving me directions! There is no way she just didn't know. And the woman in Vietcombank who wouldn't serve me is another example of a lazy Vietnamese individual. Plus, there were numerous examples of laziness in our hotel in Hoi An, where the staff said "yes" to everything to avoid engaging themselves, and where they made us traipse down the road to book our train tickets even though we wanted them to do it and they told us previously they could (and would). Plus, there are all the injured people who just stick their hats out at us, expecting us to pay for them when they won't, and their own government won't. They don't even do anything to warrant the money. At least the cyclo drivers and the moto drivers and the street sellers are actually DOING something. Selling something. Providing a service. At the Cambodian Landmine Museum, we saw what the amputee children were capable of; boys with one leg were playing football, and riding bicycles; children with no hands were manipulating things with their feet, and even using their feet for fine motor skills, painting pictures. So it isn't that these people aren't capable. They just can't be bothered.

And the scams. Even if we assume that people trying to sell their tut at unreasonably huge prices aren't scamming, there are so many others who are. For example, today we took a taxi to our restaurant. And it was from a supposedly reputable taxi company, because the hotel called it for us. We told him where to go, and he went...in the wrong direction. Now, I like to think I have a good sense of direction, and I may only have been in Huế since yesterday late afternoon, but I knew the route I would have taken, and that wasn't it. He could have turned in any direction out of our hotel, and he went completely the wrong way. Sure, we got to the restaurant eventually (showing that he knew the destination just fine), but we got there by travelling the wrong way, going over the wrong bridge, and then doubling back on ourselves. He did this to increase the meter. I know this for a fact, because the way I would have gone didn't involve one-way streets, and was a perfectly plausible, shorter route. I may even try to make a map on here to demonstrate the discrepancy, if I can be bothered/if I can get it to work. I'm no fool, and if Mike had been less impatient, the taxi driver wouldn't have got even nearly the fare shown on the meter.

And that leads me on to a potential 2nd scam of the evening. We got to the restaurant. And the sign was spelt wrong. We were looking for Lac Thien, and the sign said "Lac Thuan". I said this to Mike, and I showed the taxi driver the book, and he just gestured wildly at the place, nodding all over the place. I still wasn't sure. But we were ushered in by a woman doing a show of being deaf and mute, so I followed Mike into the restaurant, up some stairs. There was a teeny balcony overlooking a huge street corner. It was a busy junction. It was quite cool actually, the view. And a man who was certainly not mute brought us our drinks and tried to sell Mike some silk paintings that were SUPPOSEDLY painted by street children, the money going to them, but who knows really where the money is going? I wasn't interested, and looked pointedly away from the hawker. As I said, I HATE the hard sell, and it should be no surprise that this especially applies when I'm eating. I told Mike not to buy one, that he would regret it, and to tell the guy to go away. But he didn't listen, and bought one. They were OK, I guess. Not my thing. I tried to get Mike to listen. I said, "Where will you put it?", "Do you even really want it?", "I don't want you moaning to me if you buy one and regret it later." But he didn't listen, as I said.
It was only when Mike went up the street a little to take some pictures of a spectacle happening up the street that he noticed a restaurant called "Lac Thien" a couple of doors up from our restaurant. And a restaurant called "Lac Thanh" next door. And THEN it twigged with him; unbeknownst to me, a common Vietnamese scam is to set up similarly-named establishments next to the real-deal originals to try to leech off the original business. Well, I was furious when he told me. Apart from the excellent view from our restaurant, the other restaurant, when I looked at it (burning my leg on a motorbike exhaust pipe on my way - but don't worry, people, I'm fine; it hurt but there isn't a mark on me) seemed much nicer, larger and busier. And I hadn't been impressed with my food (it was quite greasy), so naturally I wished we could've gone to the restaurant we'd intended. I felt sick to my stomach thinking that we had been had (or maybe it was the greasy food).

We stewed this over the whole walk back to the hotel - we had tried to get a cab, and even got as far as getting into one, but the driver was trying to charge us $5 (100,000d - to put this in perspective, even the lying cheating taxi driver that had driven us to the restaurant had only charged 20,000d, and it really should have been more like 15,000d) when we wanted him to put the meter on. I said, "meter", and he said "$5" and so Mike - very sensibly, I think - said we should get out. So we did, even when the guy started yelling "meter, meter" at us. But he had tried it on, and we didn't want to give him our business. He was a cheat, trying to extort money from us, and it is a certainty that he would have pulled the same stunt as the other guy and driven us via a nonsensical route.

Anyway, so we stewed over the Thuan-Thien issue on our walk back to the hotel. We decided to look this up on Lonely Planet, because our restaurant had claimed to be recommended by Lonely Planet (whereas Rough Guides endorses Lac Thien). Lonely Planet didn't have a listing for either restaurant! So we looked a little deeper, and found that many reviews were saying that all three similarly-named restaurants were owned by the same deaf-mute family (big family!), and this was echoed on many seemingly reputable directory websites, who gave their combined house number as 6 (with one being at 6A, another at 6B, and ours at 6D - why not 6C, I wonder?). The man behind the reception at our hotel also said that this was the case - that it is not a question of copycat scamming, but just that they are all part of the same overarching establishment, owned by 1 family. Well, I find this hard to believe - after all, why would you have 3 competing restaurants when you could have 1 big one? It makes no sense. Do they share a kitchen? How could they, with the interceding 6C?

Either way, I didn't like the food (I'm not doing well today; I didn't like lunch either), and I haven't really enjoyed my evening so far. And I am really fed up with the Vietnamese. The Cambodians really do seem to be nicer. They smile more, and are less aggressive, and we didn't have the same problems with service that we do here. For this reason, I'm not sure I can really recommend Vietnam to others. HCMC was good (and we didn't have these issues there), but I really feel like some of the people here have really put a downer on whole swathes of our time here, which is a real shame. I mean, I am enjoying myself, but the Vietnamese are getting me so angry and riled up that it is hard to stay enjoying myself for long. It's taken me quite some time to write this post, and I STILL feel bad about our dinner and some of the Vietnamese people we've encountered today. Some of the things we've done have been amazing - like riding on motorbikes and cyclos - and we've also seen some incredible things - like the temples of Angkor and the Marble Mountains and the exhibits in the War Remnants museum - and so I hate that the Vietnamese are ruining all this for me! Learn from your neighbours, Vietnam! The Thai and Khmer people seem to have this right. So there is no excuse for you!

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After I blogged the above, Mike and I went upstairs to the top floor of our hotel for a drink in the King's Panorama Bar. When we got up there we saw that it had the same view as that from our window, just a bit higher. The drinks were expensive too; I had an "Adam and Eva" (I assume they mean Eve unless this is some pun I don't understand) and Mike had a Brandy Alexander, and this came to 300,300d - double the price of our (admittedly crap) dinner. This was because of the other annoying Vietnamese custom of adding a service charge and THEN tax. Quite apart from the fact that all the staff did was take our order and then give us a drink each, thus not warranting a service charge, to be taxed on this is just crazy. But we did enjoy our drinks (although mine got a bit pulpy towards the end), and we had a conversation as to the relative merits of rugby over football. I prefer watching rugby. And we both like the fact that you can hear the players and the referee (although obviously in football this would be unfeasible because it would all have to be beeped out).

And then we went to our room and went to sleep after watching a programme about 9/11 conspiracy theories.

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